Writing and Reading

I always wanted to get as many opinions possible on the dynamics of the multi-faceted ‘thriller’ vs. your traditional horror work. They’re quite similar, yet completely different. For months, I’ve thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and thought about it, and many times the only conclusions I came to was more thinking about it and dwelling on it and thinking about it. You get the picture.

Genre has definitely reached a gray area these days. There are no set boundaries anymore: you can have a fantasy/horror, fantasy/thriller, fantasy/romance, romance/thriller, romance/horror, romance/comedy, comedy/thriller (that would actually be interesting, too), crime/romance, crime/thriller, crime/paranormal, crime/erotic, paranormal/thriller. So many genres and subgenres. It’s like a pretzel-shaped buffet of several different cuisine styles arranged in random. Very fun to peruse and look at but also ultimately somewhat intimidating.

I’ve only been dwelling on it for so long, because my own manuscript (which is being considered by two agents currently, fingers crossed) definitely overlaps some genres. It touches on adventure, it dabbles in horror. It’s definitely mainly a thriller. There’s depth of urban fantasy in it as well (in fact, many times I categorize it as such). There’s also even a hint of mystery added into it.

So it got me thinking of what really defines a specific genre–and I’m talking mainly horror vs. thriller. Fantasy’s easy to define. Sort of. Okay, I’ll put it this way: you can identify fantasy better than describe it. But you can definitely identify it easy.

But sometimes horror/thriller isn’t as easy to identify. Or describe.

Based on plenty of feedback from colleagues and researching books of the same genre, reading how the plots are written, examining myself and my expectations and my reactions from certain works that were classified thrillers and works that were classified horror novels, here’s my understanding:

And this is a total shot in the dark, by the way; I’m simply pulling this theory out of my butt right now.

Where you traditionally have conflict as a common characteristic in literally any novel, conflict becomes a main characteristic in a thriller. It’s the centerpiece. It almost sits in front of characterization. Many times, conflict is characterization in a thriller. Let me explain:

“Silence of the Lambs”, for example: I, for the most part (and maybe others would agree or disagree with me), see this work of art (God bless Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster) as a thriller. A crime thriller, to be exact. That’s the beautiful essence of a thriller, is it can have so many different subgenres. The conflict becomes the main power in this film, also in the novel, too. It almost subverts the actual plot. It drives the plot, actually. Any good thriller does. Whereas in any other genre, the conflict is part of the plot; in a thriller, it is the plot. That’s why there always seems to be a chase scene in any thriller! That’s the embodiment of the actual conflict. In “Silence of the Lambs”, the ‘chase’ scenes happen to be the intricate, alluring, enticing, infectious, magnetic interaction and dialogue between Hannibal Lector and Clarice Starling. The fact that we have a conflict between two actual characters is the defining point in the thriller. Usually, it’s the same for any other thriller–a detective hunts a serial killer, a vampire hunts a woman he’s fallen in love with, a dark alien befriends a human being wanting to blow up the alien’s planet (okay, relatively far-fetched example). You get the picture. It’s usually someone vs. someone.

Got that? Okay, now the big challenge: identifying the ‘horror’ novel. This one’s always a tough one, because of all the outer characteristics that seem to want to define the genre. We’re used to seeing gore, ghosts, ghouls, god-awful monsters, demons, devil dogs. In fact, most of the time, that’s how we characterize works of horror.

There’s more to it than that, I think. And here’s my take on it–

And this will also seem to connect to the rather intimate relationship between the two genres, thriller and horror–

Whereas thriller tends to be about a character vs. a character (or characters), horror tends to be about a character (or characters) vs. something unknown that’s revealed gradually within the novel. That’s where the horror characteristics really shine. That’s what gets us quaking in our boots: the unknown, not knowing what’s going on and slowly finding out as you turn every scary page all the way to the end. In fact, I’ve noticed many times how close to the end the climax really is in any novel or film. Honestly, even–and this might also be a stretch–you could easily say that a horror piece could be the combination of a mystery and a thriller.

Think about it: Bram Stoker’s DRACULA, for instance. The interesting thing about the novel is it involves one developing conflict, too; it’s not the centerpiece of the novel, though. Hence, it can easily be said that it’s not a thriller. But it is a horror novel, because we don’t really fully understand who Dracula is, why he is the way he is, and how in the heck do we stop him! How frightening! That’s usually why writers and storytellers inject some of that supernatural or paranormal or fantasy element in there, because that’s beyond our realm of realism, our realm of understanding; we’re forced to want to learn, to figure out how to resolve those things. That, my friends, is what makes a horror novel. Take the film, “The Ring”: What the heck is going on?? A video tape of some random shots, plus a strange outline of a ring on the TV, and then you get a call saying you’re going to die, then you die in a very weird way (from what I remember of the film, your face gets shriveled up like a prune or something), and no one can figure out why. Horror! Dear God, how is that not horror? It’s definitely not a thriller. The conflict is rather the character, played by Naomi Watts, vs. the problem, the mystery. And as the movie moves along, we learn more behind that mystery, revealing another ‘character’, an evil spirit. Even then, though, it doesn’t even represent a thriller due to the introduction of an opposing character into the plot, because this new ‘character’ doesn’t necessarily have any stake in the conflict. The evil spirit is just…’there’, existing as an entity designed to want to devour you or kill you or whatever it wants to do to you. It has no motivation, no reasoning. It just simply is what it is. You get the picture.

Anyone have thoughts on the concepts of a thriller? Concepts of a horror novel? What scares you in a horror novel? And I mean really scares you? Sort of like the ride up the first drop of a roller coaster. Usually that’s a pretty scary part, even though you’re not screaming. Then you make the drop, and you’re screaming bloody murder. I’m talking about the ride up here: the real scary part.

What kinds of thrillers do you like, since there are so many kinds out there? We have techno-thrillers, religious thrillers (yay, Dan Brown), paranormal thrillers, supernatural thrillers, legal thrillers, crime thrillers, romantic thrillers, erotic thrillers, fantasy thrillers, even science fiction thrillers. I guess because a thriller’s generally very basic in design, you can inject any major genre into it, and it could work.

A relatively long post. But again, that’s what you signed up for here, readers! I am a ranter! Hear me roar!